Germany

The 3SI Group, formerly known as 3 Suisses International, has decided to pull the plug on all of its retail activities in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. It has changed its business strategy drastically and will now focus solely on service activities.

Berlin may be the second city in Europe where Amazon delivers goods within two hours after an order has been placed. The American retail giant is said to prepare the launch of its two-hour delivery service in the German capital. Amazon already offers such offering in London.

Zalando is becoming more and more a fashion platform rather than just an online fashion retailer. The German ecommerce giant has now announced its new service, Fulfillment by Zalando. The company states that its mission, as Zalando Operations, is to become the best fulfillment partner for fashion in Europe.

Crowdfox, a German startup that wants to compete with Amazon, has raised a 5 million euros seed round from private investors. But the startup gets more than only fresh capital. The experience and network of the investing partners give Crowdfox some advantages with scaling the company; for the end of 2016 it has planned an international market entry.

German fashion retailer Bonprix continues to grow and has now presented a successful track record of the previous fiscal year. The Otto Group subsidiary recorded revenue growth of 11 percent from just under 1.3 billion to (preliminary) more than 1.4 billion euros. More than half of its total turnover was generated at foreign markets.

For years, many consumers in Germany have used purchase on account when they went online shopping. But this payment method is losing popularity. When asked about the five payment methods they prefer to use, nearly 40 percent of German consumers ranked purchase on account in the first place. But in 2014, it was one in two consumers who preferred this payment method.

Zalando has launched yet another mobile shopping app. With the app Fleek, the German fashion retailer wants to inspire users with fashion items and offer them effortless shopping. Its dream is to offer one of the broadest in-app lifestyle assortments in Europe.

Slightly more than half of active traders on Amazon's German marketplace actually come from Germany. In absolute figures, it concerns about 27,000 German retailers. For comparison: on eBay Germany, there are about 122,000 German suppliers active. One in five retailers who sell via Amazon come from the United Kingdom and more than 9 percent comes from Asia.

German startup Picalike has served more than 100 million relevant product recommendations based on visual similarity in just one month. The software solution searches and matches product pictures, so customers find what they are looking for. Online retailers Otto, Bonprix and Esprit are among the ecommerce companies using Picalike.

Zalando saw its revenue increase with 33.6 percent year-on-year, which is more than was expected. The revenue growth was due to a continued focus on customer proposition and reinforced by additional market opportunities. After a strong financial year, Zalando expects its revenue to increase by about 25 percent this year.

Shopgate, a popular mobile commerce platform from Germany, announced it has appointed former COO/CFO Marc Biel as its Chief Executive Officer to lead its expansion strategy into the American mobile market. Shopgate also moves its US headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, where it will hire 50 new staff this year.

After successfully launching its new ecommerce sites in Germany and Switzerland, Douglas is now ready to roll out new online stores across Europe this year. Target markets include Norway, Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The German website Kreditkarte.net has published a comprehensive overview of the 60 payment service providers that are active on the German market. Their services are placed side by side, so you can compare them easily. See what every PSP cost, what payment methods they offer, if they can be used with your shopping cart software and if they offer fraud prevention.

The online and mail order industry in Germany recorded a sales increase of 12 percent last year. This growth rate is significantly higher than that of the total retail industry, which saw its sales increase with 3.1 percent. Ecommerce in Germany was worth 59.87 billion euros in 2015.

The Media-Saturn Group wants to open 50 new physical stores across Europe. The German electronics retail group wants to focus more on its omnichannel-strategy. Although the company's goal with the internet business is still to be worth 15 to 20 percent of its total revenue, the resurrection of the physical store has come in between, says Pieter Haas, chairman of the management board.